Some excepts from an extensive interview with VM creator Rob Thomas in the 6/22/05 Ask Ausiello column. You can go there to read the full interview, but "Warning Will Robinson," there are many 2nd season spoilers, one of which even I didn't read and none of which I'll repeat here.

On the changes UPN President Dawn Ostroff has requested, "They're not major. She wants more presence from twentysomething characters in the show. She wants a bit more diversity in the cast. And she wants it sexier, ... They're not jamming us too hard on anything that hurts the integrity of the show."

On killing off a major character, "No. The thing I read was in Episode 6 we're gonna kill off one of our main characters, and that's not true. But in order to make the budget work, a number of actors on the show lost a few episodes in their contracts. I wouldn't have done that of my own volition. That was forced on me." "It's like one went from 22 to 16. One went from 16 to 12." Unfortunately one of my faves.

On whether we'll see Amanda Seyfried as Lilly Kane again, "There are no plans to see her. Again, we adore her. She was such a money character for us this year."

On the level of UPN's involvement, "They are nervous again. They have given us their best time slot and they want this to work. So, again they're back in our [pause] the notes, calls are taking a little longer and we're having a minibattle here on the first episode. But right now we're not shooting anything or writing anything that I'm not happy with, so they haven't tinkered us into silliness."